After Pres. Obama provided additional financial assistance to America's Big Three automakers, the Big Three Republicans - Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney - went on national news to call that aid a mistake.

It'll never work, they claimed. They'll never pay it back, they said. We'll be worse off, and pretty quickly, too, they swore.

All three auto manufacturers are still in business, though. With new sales, new profits and even new U.S. employment. And today, Chrysler paid off the remaining $5.9 billion it owed the U.S. government.

That still leaves one question unanswered: if they were that blatantly wrong, and on a topic so vital to our national economy, how the hell could we trust any of those Big Three Republicans - each of whom is a declared '12 presidential candidate - to run this country?

UPDATE: Romney is now claiming the additional aid to the auto industry was his idea first!